How does a tree (or any plant, really), know to evolve to produce a delicious fruit or a poison berry, a seed inside an impenetrable shell, or invent a type of flying machine, in order to reproduce? (Each of these examples exists in my backyard)
How do they receive feedback about their evolutionary experiments? How do they know it worked/failed. [10]
Do your parents have to die for you to be the next generation? No. An organism and it’s offspring are very frequently alive at the same time and apart of different generations. Once an organism has offspring, a new generation exists. So however old an is when it can reproduce, that is the length of a generation for that species. It has nothing to do with how long said organism can live.